So the cops have my good phone, and they have possessed it since April 8th. I bought a crappy flip phone in lieu of getting it back, a unit with the old school keypad that makes texting a chore. Sadly, the wheels of justice in Asheville move quite slowly, so eight months later my case is still unsettled, and I was still rocking the shitty phone. Throughout all this time it hadn't occurred to me until few days ago that I could probably find a phone retired by one of my friends that featured a full keyboard. What with technology being so disposable anymore, perfectly functional phones are relegated to backup duty all the time. So I found one---my friend Jim's bulky old Samsung that was missing the back that kept the battery secure, but the price was right: free. All I had to do was take it to the Sprint store to get it cranking with a prepaid plan, because my ass is broke with ghetto credit. This is normally something I would put off a few days, and this was no exception. But a funny thing happened to get me motivated.
My old phone was set on vibrate, and placed on the dresser next to my bed. Normally the ringer would probably be on, but lately a bill collector seems to think he's doubling as my alarm clock. Also, I don't always remember to turn off the vibrate after AA meetings, so I'll miss calls here and there. Never once did I think this would lead to the death of my flip phone, but such was the case. I heard it rattling when half asleep in the early daylight, but ignored it. Bad move. When I rose to face the day a couple hours later I picked up my cup of water off the floor only to find a marinating phone. It had fallen off the dresser directly into the cup.
My first task was to remove the battery and try to dry it out a bit, but of course I pushed a couple of buttons just in case it worked anyway. (give me a break---I had just woken up!). I then went to YouTube to read what to do about a wet phone, and step one was to not push any buttons, lest it short circuit and guarantee the phone is toast. Oops! In any event, this episode obviously drastically increased the urgency to visit the Sprint store---good thing I procured the replacement phone a few days earlier!
The sales guy was polite to not laugh in my face when I showed him the phone, and pointed out that they don't offer broke-ass prepaid deals. He suggested I take my brick, err, phone to Metro PCS, or some other carrier that doesn't offer free roaming, etc. Luckily I was in a shopping complex that also hosts a Best Buy, so I figured I'd drop in there to see if they had a better option. I was happy to find this next store not completely overrun with Black Friday shoppers, and I was able to quickly find more phone options. Turns out had I researched at all I would've learned that a brand new phone costs, quite literally in one case, nothing.
The phone model I drowned was $9.99, and came with a prepaid credit of ten dollars, which made it essentially free. In addition, there was an off-brand, (Pantech), model that had a full keyboard and was only $59.99, with a ten dollar airtime credit of it's own. It was here that I also learned that I could easily top my $1.99 per day deal, (not including texts), I currently used on Verizon with a flat rate of $50, including unlimited texting. Now I had a decision to make: should I simply replace my old phone essentially for free and assume I'm going “up the river” in a month or two anyway? Or do I figure at the rate it's going I'll be out another three months and get the phone with the keyboard because my new calling plan will pay for it in two or three months? Did you plan on reading this sort of minutia when you started this? Sorry about that.
After much deliberation I pried myself out of my mega-saving mode and splurged for the $59.99 phone. No more dismissing incoming texts because I didn't feel like the cumbersome task of typing back, and no more worrying about the cost of photos sent to me that I couldn't see on the tiny screen anyway. So ultimately what began as an ominous sign of a crappy day to come---my phone in a cup of water---ended with a solution to my existing phone keyboard problem with a minimal cash outlay. Sure I lost all my numbers, but those aren't too hard to recover these days anyway.
What's most impressive to me is I didn't lose my shit over it and worry---just sort of took it in stride. I also enjoyed having a wacky story to tell all day, and even the Verizon guy had never heard of this one. The guy in the store tried to sell me a warranty for my phone “in case this happens again”. I told him if my phone ever falls into a cup of water again I'll come in and let him kick me in the nuts. I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. And you can text me whenever you want, and I'll text you back---maybe even with a photo!
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Rock Eagle Men's Workshop (No Homo)
Despite the potentially salacious name for this outing, it was in fact an innocent gathering of totally sober men of all ages for a weekend of Alcoholics Anonymous-based fellowship. My involvement in this event is due to my internment in a halfway house, which requires intense involvement on AA as part of my recovery from substance addiction. In a larger sense, this is all a result of my recent arrest, but this particular blog entry won’t detail any of that. (You may, however, find such posts elsewhere at WitStream’s Trickles.)
While I am enthusiastic about AA-based recovery, I was less so about the prospect of taking a weekend to join some four hundred gentleman at a 4-H camp facility in the middle of nowhere. Alas, my AA sponsor and the lady who runs my halfway house came through with a “scholarship”, which allowed for 75% off the registration cost, thus making it doable for my broke ass. I was promised a fine opportunity for fellowship and networking, and in my situation any little bit helps. So I escaped a busy Friday afternoon on the courier trail, collected two of my fellows from my recovery residence program and embarked for Eastern Georgia, and no shortage of mens.
I was happy to make this getaway with one of my roommates, Brian, who is a very sharp lad who has fallen on some trying times. I enjoy his company, unlike the other guy who came with us, Ryan, who comes across as something of a lunatic. Happily, however, it soon became apparent that I had caught Ryan on a bad day when I gave him a ride home from the grocery store and he really appeared to have a screw loose. Alas, he turned out to be a delightful chap and a fine addition to our party. We finished the nearly two hour trek through a Friday Atlanta rush hour relatively unscathed and were able to get to our cottage with plenty of time to join in the opening festivity---a BBQ with hundreds of recovering addicts.
The camp facility was most impressive, as might be expected being affiliated with the University of Georgia, and its endowment. The grounds were well-manicured, with lots of benches here and there, and had very modern buildings and furniture in all of the common areas. The setting was also idyllic---in the middle of the woods, on a small lake, and there was a giant eagle formed out of rocks by Indians centuries ago that I didn’t bother going to see.. There were a few newly-built cabins as well, but the majority of them were clearly at least forty years old. Herein lied the problem for the middle-aged man: the accommodations. The older cabins had eight men to a bunk bed-furnished room, featuring a bathroom with one shower stall and an unfortunate musty smell. Suddenly, he reason for me balking at attending this workshop to begin with basically slapped me in the fact---but this was only the beginning. More on this later...
To be completely honest, besides the essential assistance the AA fellowship and meetings provides, one of my favorite aspects of my recovery is the presence of the fairer sex. I figure if my life is in the shitter, generally speaking, at least I can engage in one of my favorite pastimes: flirting with women. I mention this because this BBQ offered anything but this. While no surprise, this reality still a jolt, and keeping a happy face wasn’t the easiest thing to do initially. The chatterbox we ended up dining next to didn’t help matters either. While I tried to keep an open mind, sure enough the University of Florida hat proved to be an indicator of simply bad conversation, but I digress, (you'd probably have to live in the South to understand). Thankfully it’s easy to lose people, if necessary, in a group of a few hundred.
Luckily my snobbery was short-lived, as I spotted numerous fellow Atlantans that I knew from meetings in the crowd. I chatted them up in our new environs and they enthusiastically talked up what lay in store for the weekend. A “cabin meeting” followed, i.e. all of the guys in our sleeping quarters met for the first time, introducing ourselves so that bonding with those you have something in common would be easier. This normally consists of each person declaring his sobriety date, possibly his drug(s) of choice, how many of these events he’s attended, and what he expects out of the experience. Most keep it brief, but there are always those who enjoy hearing themselves talk and/or get a tad sanctimonious with their “sharing”. Our group of sixteen spanned ages of around twenty to over seventy, and most appeared to be cool people to be around. Unfortunately this encounter failed to expose the felonious snorers among us, which would’ve allowed us to quarantine them in the living room/spare bedroom. I’ll detail this dreadful dilemma a little later.
The Festivities Begin
Not long after the cabin meeting, all attendees descended on the auditorium for some welcoming words from the chairman of the steering committee, followed by the weekend’s first speaker. The building was nearly new, but more interestingly, we got free reign in the ladies room, since this was a men only event. Oddly there were no tampon dispensers installed, which I found to be quite odd. Anyway, there was abundant enthusiasm in the gathering, although I couldn’t help but think it because all these men had made an escape from their spouses and responsibilities for a weekend than anything the program offered. The fact is, when you remove drugs and alcohol from life, seemingly small things like a getaway with four hundred men feels like getting away with something. But I digress again---back to the proceedings.
A portly older gentleman with a scowl, a booming voice and a hair style similar to Bob’s Big Boy made his way to the podium to kick things off. Coincidentally, this guy is also my “grand-sponsor” in AA, although this doesn’t necessarily mean I come in contact with him often. Anyway, “Bob” begins by explaining how he was involved with this workshop fifty-nine editions ago and how he has twenty-nine years of sobriety. This is information we can use, and while certainly impressive, falls short of braggadocio. But then... Bob somehow works in that he recently stayed in a four star resort in Palm Springs for a recent AA-based event, complete with a Rolls Royce limo as transportation. Then he introduces a video, to play on the stage screen, of a marginally funny old Bill Cosby bit about drinking. All well and good, except Bob makes it clear that he knows Mr.Cosby personally, and that he gave him permission to use the clip for this occasion. In fact, the video begins with something like: “By permission to Bob’s Big Boy by Mr. Bill Cosby”. As if Cosby’s lawyers would track down someone for playing a video of him at some obscure workshop for alcoholics that isn’t being re-broadcast anywhere? Really?
I point all of this out only because of the stark contrast Bob made to the concept of humility, which is one of the basic tenets of AA. Far from sounding humble, this guy put off the vibe that he was in fact the Grand Poo-Bah, and you got the feeling if someone wished to crown him he would at least briefly consider the opportunity. (And things get even worse with this guy as the weekend unfolded, trust me.) Really, it was unintentional comedy at it’s finest, and a nice warm-up act for the evening’s keynote speaker: Randy, a classic redneck from the hills of Western North Carolina.
Randy wore a coat and tie that recalled a kid going for his senior pictures, and added a black beret-style lid that covered most of the bowl cut of his salt-and-papper hair. As he gazed into the audience through his yellow-tinted safety glasses I had to wonder if this was in fact a comedian opening for the night’s headliner. Lo and behold, this was the guy---an AA vet with nineteen years of sobriety and a large number of speaking appearances for these occasions under his belt. In fact, he was among those at the Palm Springs event our pompous host has mentioned earlier. Randy may not have been technically a comic, but I’ll be damned if he wasn’t a humorist reminiscent of Brother Dave Gardner, who was another Charlotte-area native with an alcohol problem.
Off Randy went, with the smoothest speaking style you’ve ever heard. No “ums”, or “uh’s” here---this guy was polished. He proceeded to go well over an hour with his story of torment and ultimately triumph, thanks to getting sober in AA. Along the way we learned that he had his own personal Curtis Loew in his small hometown, except instead of playing all day in exchange for wine, this guy didn’t play shit, but instead bought Randy the wine as long as he got some for himself. He also had a hard-working Mama, an old ‘59 hearse as his first vehicle, and referred to a the repo man and the “take-back” man. Overall he was most inspiring as a speaker and my enthusiasm for the weekend was duly lifted.
Into The Night
We then repaired to another building for snacks, which consisted of a little fruit and a shitload of doughnuts and cake to go with coffee and sodas. Much to my consternation, however, there were no napkins available, which kind of blew my mind. I had a word with a member of the steering committee, (my sponsor), about this transgression, and he explained that: “we’ve never had them.”, as if this was an acceptable explanation.
The next segment of our workshop were smaller groups featuring speakers on whatever issue might be pertinent, in my case this was being broke as fuck, for lack of a better term.
This consisted of a couple of guys giving uninspired speeches about how life had kicked their asses and how the steps of AA help them deal with the aftermath. While it was oddly heartening to realize I was not alone, this was hardly a good chance to network so that I might be helped out of my currently poor circumstance. It was still a worthwhile lecture on some level though, and a decent way to wrap up the evening. Unlike a lot of fellow “Rock” attendees, I was uninterested in staying up late and bullshitting with people because I was quite tired and preferred going to bed. Then the fun began...
My roommate Brian and I retired before all of the other six, climbing to the top of our bunk beds by using the frame for lack of a built-in ladder. At 6’6”, I’m a bit long for these accommodations to begin with, even though I sleep on my side. The ancient mattress and a room that smelled like dirty socks didn’t help either, but I got to sleep eventually. Until...
I was awakened by what sounded like a person having the last breath strangled out of him. A murder in progress? Not exactly. It was “merely” one of our roommates who suffered from sleep apnea, but had yet to get the machine with which he could be treated.
And so it went for the rest of the night---even though I had earplugs in and a spare pillow over my head. They tell me that the other poor saps in the room joked about the offender initially, but his completely random growls made them lose their senses of humor real quick. For good measure, there were also two other people in the room, one directly below me, who also snored. And the room still smelled like dirty socks, most likely mixed with an occasional fart, I’m sure---which certainly made its way to the upper reaches of the room before dissipating. Sure enough, my worst nightmare of why I was reluctant to come to this thing were realized. Check that---actually I would’ve loved a nightmare---because that would’ve meant actually getting to sleep! The net-net is I probably managed two hours of shut-eye total, and I ideally need about nine. Not exactly a promising start to the second day of enlightenment and fellowship!
Sleep Deprivation As A Drug
So day two started way earlier than normal for me: 6:30. Or did day one ever in fact end? What with the jackhammer menace to slumbering society in our cabin, who the fuck knew?
In any event, I went bleary-eyed to the brand new cafeteria to get some food. I ended up sitting with a couple of other chaps from my halfway house, one of whom is basically dropping a diving board cannonball on life. By this I mean he’s a “type A” personality multiplied by a thousand. Now I’m no morning person to begin with, and this guy is abrasive on a normal evening, let alone in this situation, but I was kind of obligated to sit with them because they caught me looking at them when sizing up my spot. It turns out I’m glad I did, because we laughed our asses off about nothing in particular. I was punch drunk, and spitting out lethal one-liners like it was my job. Looking back, that was probably the most fun I had the whole weekend. Funny how that works.
The day’s first event was at the auditorium with the wide-open ladies room, and we were treated to three different speakers who did about twenty-five minutes each. First up was a young whipper-snapper who had one of those frat boy haircuts that covered his forehead. I must say the lad looked good in a suit and tie, though, and he spoke with a grace that belied his years. His message of his AA recovery was pretty standard, and I must say it’s kind of tough to take seriously a story from a kid of twenty-two. He also went to the water bottle way too many times, indeed sometimes removing the top and forgetting to actually drink. I couldn’t help but allow this tic to distract me, along with somewhat evilly speculating to myself roughly when his first relapse will arrive. (If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in my four-month AA crash course, it’s that almost no one makes it on the first try.) “Sure, you’re riding high now, kid...”, I thought. Was it the sleep deprivation that made me a dick or am I simply an asshole in general? We may never know...
The next guy was certainly the speaker of the weekend in my book, as well as many others. He was a standard white guy in his mid-thirties, that is to say he looked exactly like a Mormon. You know the guy---hair sprayed like a politician, etc. He was exceptional on the stump too. High-energy, humorous, intelligent---this guy had it all, including several years of sobriety and a kick-ass message to the masses. I don’t quite recall what the message was because I failed to take notes, but I know it was solid. Hell, as good a speaker as he was I likely would’ve been on board if he proposed an ecstasy party later that night, three months of sobriety be damned!
Wrapping up the clumsily-ordered speaking trifecta was a guy who looked very much like the basketball coach Phil Jackson. He’s a fireman by profession, and I’m sure I’m not alone in being glad he got off the sauce, just for the sake of his jurisdiction. He was a low energy, Buzz Killington, which is why i question the order of the speakers. Don’t get me wrong---people with downer stories are important for learning in AA, just not necessarily as closing speakers. He was a wise man who had been through quite a lot though, but I don’t quite recall anything specific from his speech. Check that; I did remember one thing: that the guy was an “incest survivor”. Not to belittle this guy’s plight, but as a speaker, as soon as you drop this sort of information the audience’s minds are likely to wander. Personally I didn’t hear a thing he said for the next five minutes as I imagined what specifically he was talking about. Was it an Uncle? An unattractive big sister? As with this speaker, I probably shouldn’t have brought this up either...let’s just move along.
After this speaker event, the crowd split up into smaller groups, each focused on one of the AA steps. I wanted to attend the second and third step, because I’m still in dire need of spiritual guidance. Unfortunately that meeting was on one end of a large room while another meeting was being staged on the other, about sixty feet away. Too much chaos for me---much like a music festival at which two stages are too close together. So I tracked down the step one meeting, which happened to be right behind our house of horrors, err, cabin. It was a good meeting as these things go, most certainly because anyone serious enough about their AA “program” to come sleep in a barracks for two nights is going to say something half-thoughtful anyway. (AA meeting quality can vary, trust me!)
I enjoyed a lunch of processed chicken fingers in the ultra-modern cafeteria, joined by Brian and a guy from our cabin who looks very much like Jesus, only with shorter hair. He’s from Atlanta as well, and attends an AA meeting in Va Highland called “High Noon”, which is probably not the best name for a group of people trying to stay sober. We learned that Jesus has two teen-aged kids at home, and only later discovered that he’s gay and the kids are adopted from Asia. Not that there’s anything wrong with that---the guy could pass as the Messiah himself!
Brian and I were joined by another cabin-mate, (whose name escapes me, of course), for a leisurely stroll around the grounds and some good soberly fellowship. As we embarked on our walk we came across a frisbee whose owner was clearly nowhere nearby. Seeing that I forgot to bring mine, I had a very strong impulse to pick it up and use it on our walk, surely to put it back where I found it. The other two balked at this plan, our new friend pointing out something ridiculous like: “if the owner isn’t around to ask, I assume I can’t borrow something.” I countered with: “Well, we’re only going to be gone thirty minutes, and this frisbee is clearly idle.” Ultimately Brian cast the deciding “no” vote, and we left the fucking disc there. Luckily it was a beautiful fall day in a wonderful setting, so I got over the disappointment quickly.
Our walk took us past the small lake and the enchantment of about forty turtles of varying size , tightly lined up on logs basking in the sun. Half of them dove into the water when we got within two hundred yards of them, so I assume those were the French. We passed a couple of young ladies who were in for a much, much smaller church-based retreat and resisted the urge to chat them up. In retrospect I can’t tell you if they were attractive or not because being immersed in four hundred middle-aged dry drunks will straight-up screw with a man’s perspective. Susan Boyle probably would’ve looked hot at this point. The third guy mentioned he was originally from Philly, but somehow was unaware that Hall and Oates were also from there. In addition, he had never even heard of Cinderella. I probably shouldn’t have shoved him off the dock for this lack of knowledge, but fuck this guy. Just kidding---I didn’t make a big deal out of it.
The Highlight of the Trip
.
I wandered back near our cabin after lunch with intentions of joining a pick-up softball game, but it wasn’t to start for an hour or so. I considered a nap, but since that might detract from my punch-drunk state from sleep-deprivation, I decided to fight on with the waking world. Actually, it was more like I heard the young fellow who opened that morning’s speaker line-up playing a Widespread Panic song on guitar on the front porch of a cabin two down from mine. Theirs was a modern, deluxe version, which housed the steering committee members, (my sponsor among them), and the guest speakers, and it felt sort of off-limits to us commoners. Good thing I didn’t care at this point...
I introduced myself to the kid, named Chase, and sat next to him and we chatted about jam bands. He was friendly enough, but seemed a little off in a way. Right about the time I was going to peace out, out walked Marty, the entertaining speaker from the night before who had the same accent as my grandparents, along with the aforementioned Brother Dave Gardner. Well how about this luck! I was thrilled to leave the dud kid a-strummin’ and move over next to Marty and let the stories begin.
I’m not sure what was more remarkable: that he had worked at a nuclear power plant since he was an eighteen year-old drunk or that he’s left this slight detail out of his story when he was on the stump. I mean, he was essentially a drunk Homer Simpson wandering around split atoms for over twenty years. Perhaps his spectacles didn’t have yellow tinted lenses after all---it could be the radiation coming out of his head! But seriously, it turns out that former Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart served on the host committee at the aforementioned Palm Springs AA conference, and Marty got an opportunity to see her famous legs. Not spread or anything---just modeled a little at his request. What a doll! Marty also mentioned the the Rolls Royce chauffeur genuinely scared him, and he and his wife took a cab to ‘ol Tony Bennett’s restaurant and back even though it cost him over a hundred bucks.
Soon enough we were surrounded by four or five other people, and while the conversation was still lively, my private audience with Marty was sadly gone. I must say the guy with the long beard with a fake spider stuck in it was pretty funny though, despite his obviously trying too hard with his prop. Which reminds me, there was an attendee here who wore a t- shirt: “Alcatraz Psycho Ward”. In my book it might as well have read: “I Try Too Hard; Avoid Me!”. Rarely is the good conversation found with someone who’s wearing a stupid t-shirt. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I’ll take my chances. I hung out on the porch for a little while longer before heading over for the pickup softball game.
I didn’t get to shag any fly balls beforehand, which is the excuse I’m giving for coming in on the first inning ball that shot over my head in center field. I also nearly struck out in my one at bat, and then took the opportunity to quit playing because it couldn’t be good for my hernia. Sadly, at age forty-six I pretty much need to stop playing every sport but golf, simply because they hurt. Anyway, I settled for joining the peanut gallery, making fun of the guys still playing, and flipping the frisbee around with some dude, (who owned it), and that was fun enough.
Next up on the official schedule was a Q&A session with a panel of all the weekend’s speakers. They were all in casual attire, which immediately made me wonder why they wore suits when speaking for our motley crew in the first place. Just as I wonder why TV sports announcers are required to wear a coat and tie to address a bunch of guys laying on their couches scratching their balls, but I digress. The guy with the fake spider in his beard read questions submitted by attendees since the start of the weekend, and all were regarding AA recovery. Mormon Guy was quick to answer almost all of the time, and the others piped up often as well. I must say it was tough to take the twenty-two year old seriously regarding life advice, but I’m sure it wasn’t his idea to be up there. And speaking of being up...
This session ended with the aforementioned Grand Pooh-Bah of the weekend---my grandsponsor “Bob”---getting up on stage to oversee the weekend's lone “passing of the hat”, for donations towards future scholarships. And by “oversee”, I mean: “darkly scowl, growl, and leer at the audience of hundreds as they presumably gave until it hurt.” I don't exaggerate when I say this felt like a mass trip to the principal's office, even though I tossed in ten bucks. The guy demanded silence from everyone as he stood there, sometimes with his arms crossed, laying on the most intense non-verbal guilt trip imaginable. He might as well have said: “You only threw five bucks into the pot? THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!” And this awkwardness went on for a good ten minutes, without even the benefit of background music, which most fittingly would've been Black Sabbath's “War Pigs”, or something. It was just bizarre. I'm not going to lie: (I'm still afraid of the guy, and this happened a month ago!)
“Fuck it---let’s leave!”
After the afternoon session, our impossibly loud snorer situation in the cabin took front and center in the proceedings. Brian, Ryan, and I decided to leave after the final program later that night, thus missing the final speaker Sunday morning and presumably getting a solid night’s sleep. We loaded our shit into the car to facilitate the “thief-in-the-night” style exit and then got down to exactly when we would leave. This was all well and good until I ran into my sponsor Eric, (who again is on the steering committee for the event), at dinner an hour later. After putting it off for a while I finally kind of threw it out there. “Oh, by the way, we’re gonna blaze out of here after the speaker tonight, so that we might get more than a couple of hours of sleep. That’s not going to make you mad, is it?”
Low-key Eric merely said something like: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Sunday morning’s event is the best part of the weekend, blah, blah, blah.” This was a bitter defeat, and I was cursing my luck for finding the AA 12-step program, which encourages doing the right thing so often---so very annoyingly sometimes. In the past I would’ve have told Eric shit, and just took off as planned, simply fabricating if confronted later: “Oh, you didn’t see me at the closing program? Shit...I guess I should’ve waited to take that leak until after the lord’s prayer so it wouldn’t look like I blew it off!” Yes, the only thing good about this dinner proved to be the tasty pasta /cheese whatever the hell it was.
The fact is that for a while afterwards, I still intended to leave, even though Eric would probably fire me as a sponsee. We vacillated quite a bit before deciding to stay, and I felt like I was in the middle of some stupid reality show, with some orchestrated “dilemma”. I must say it was amusing though. Ultimately, knowing that our Halfway House Mom Debbie would likely be pissed, not to mention Eric went to the trouble of getting us steep discounts to attend in the first place. Leaving to save one night’s sleep would’ve caused more problems than it was worth. I was still not happy however, so if we were staying, the next challenge was to try to solve the problem instead. Clearly, the snorer needed to die. Just kidding.
We returned to our bunk to find several of the other victims hanging out and, needless to say, I took the bull by the horns. I immediately determined whether the main offender was there at the time, but he wasn’t. I then suggested we all vote the fucker out into the common room, which had some spare sleeping arrangements in addition to some couches. I was thinking about taking one of them myself, but it would obviously be better to cast out one guy as opposed to having the other seven have to worry about avoiding him. Seems only fair.
A roomie named John said he actually knew the offender, and would convey that we wanted him out, and get back to us later with the result. Good enough, I thought, despite the fact that John himself snores like a motherfucker, and was in the bed directly below me. Honestly, I should’ve told them both to GTFO, but I’m simply not that big of a dick. I was satisfied the problem would be solved at this point, and I could live with a merely rhythmic snorer as long as a dude who sounds like he’s drowning doesn’t wake me up every half hour. At this point Brian, Ryan, and I took our gear back out of the car and moved in again, much to the amusement of Eric, who saw us from the porch of his cabin. I don’t think he knew how serious we were about taking off.
The Soul Man
Now I’m not going to say this was a lily-white affair by any means, but it’s safe to say that that the percentage of minorities in AA is much lower than the population at large. In other words, this gathering needed an infusion of energy---soul, if you will---and boy did we get it!
This guy in his mid-thirties was a straight-up Baptist-style speaker, and he looked the part too, with a dark pinstriped suit accessorized with a gold necklace and big-framed spectacles. He was of strong build and carried a stronger message----one of survival from the streets of Tampa, along with the wrong side of prison walls. (This sort of spoke to me, and not because I’m from Tampa, I’m not.)
He had a speaking style that demanded your attention, and the cadence and voice of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. His was a very polished message, and he had it down. No way this guy was resting on his AA speaker circuit laurels just because he was filling a racial quota---he brought game. More importantly, he did not do a: “the last time I saw this many white people in a room” joke, much to this comic’s relief. His overall message was one of accountability and perseverance, sprinkled with little asides of the good life he was living when he was running drugs and chasing tail. I’m not sure if he wasn’t used to his speaking time frame or not, but he seemed to go about fifteen minutes longer than he needed to. In addition, you could tell the parts of his rap that were relatively new because he would speak perfectly for a few minutes, and then suddenly be saying: “um”, “uhh”, etc. It was noticeable only because he was so smooth most of the time---a really great speaker.
Us attendees soon found our uplifted selves heading to the snack building for more messy doughnuts and cake with no napkins or paper towels. I ran into my sponsor Eric, who amusingly enough thought I saw him and tried to avoid him. I assured hum this was not the case, however, and we had a good conversation about the proceedings and how he was glad that my crew and I were staying another night. I ended up chatting with him and another dude a bit too long, and this caused some adversity because it made me late for my next lecture: “Dealing With Adversity”. I raced back to the auditorium and joined the crowd watching a video of a speech by a former prisoner of war.
Now while my lifestyle has been knocked down a number of pegs, I really don’t have it that bad. Sure, I have a possible prison sentence hanging over me, I’m bankrupt, and coming to terms with the fact that I’ll never catch another artificial buzz in my lifetime, but... At least I’m not in a prison camp in Viet Nam, living on rice and water, not knowing if I’m going to to ever be released, and even live or die. (Ninety AA meetings in ninety days is a similar test, but ultimately not comparable.) Yes, this program was just the tonic to make all of us feel better about ourselves---all the way down to the guy who looks like Phil Jackson serving as the discussion leader. It was all kind of like the TV show COPS, and the garbage like Maury Povitch: sure, I may be down, but at least I’m not that person!
After the video ended the mic was somewhat awkwardly passed around the auditorium for people to share their thoughts about the video or their own tales of woe and how they’re dealing with those obstacles. It was really quite uplifting and inspiring. I grabbed the mic at one point and after pausing a few seconds, said: “I really don’t have anything to share, I just wanted the people seated near me to feel slightly awkward because everyone is looking this way right now.” (Actually I didn’t do that, but the thought did occur to me.) All in all, it was a great way to finish up the day’s events, and I was glad to have stuck around because our earlier plan had us skipping out by then.
Bunk Funk: The Conclusion
While the majority of my fellow Rock attendees stayed up late kibitzing and rekindling old friendships, I was on the back end of a day-long caffeine buzz, so I was going to bed. Upon returning to my musty sleeping quarters, my lower bunkie informed me that he was unable to locate Offensive Snorer to inform him that he's been “voted off the island”. I checked to see if any of the beds in the common area
were available, only to find they were all claimed. Seasoned veterans off this sort of dilemma, no doubt! Anyway, realizing my options were severely limited and I was tired as hell, I just took to my bed and hoped one of my other roommates had him killed or something.
As it turned out, the snorer never re-surfaced in the room that night, although the guy below me still sawed logs like you read about. That was small potatoes by comparison, though, and I got a decent night's sleep. In fact, I slept until 7:30, whereupon Ryan woke me up in time for me to dash to the cafeteria and shovel down some food prior to the weekend's final program. It turned out the coffee in our portion of the chow hall was on empty, so we had to invade the other side to take some of theirs. This made me feel like I was getting away with something, and also feel like a dirty old man, as there were some young ladies around, thanks to the aforementioned church retreat. All of them looked like “10's” at this point in the weekend, I can tell you that much.
The final gathering of the weekend commenced, with the subject naturally being spirituality. The guy doing the speaking was seemingly nice enough, but he didn't really come across as a real spiritual guy. Frankly, I expected him to start talking about his DVD series at any moment, given his plentiful amusing anecdotes and sales jokes. (I would later discover that the steering committee has struggled to replace a guy who was an ace in this Sunday speaking slot, and that can't be an easy task.) This isn't to say the speaker was bad, it's more to express some disappointment that we stayed an extra night in a locker room for the privilege of hearing it.
The weekend's events was brought to a close in fine fashion, however, thanks to the Grand Poobah giving new instructions for the Lord's Prayer that closed the session. We were to keep our eyes open and survey the brotherhood instead of looking down in meditative fashion. Indeed, the resulting emotions were quite powerful. The prayer was the most remarkable parts of any of the gatherings in the auditorium, as there's a certain power and moving nature in hundreds of formerly broken men joining together arm-in-arm in reverence of their higher powers. And I'm far from a fan of the prayer itself or organized religion in general. It was simply not something I think can be seen and felt just every day.
After things wrapped up I bid farewell to my sponsor Eric and a few others whom I had met and high-tailed it out of there with Brain and Ryan in tow. We stopped quickly at a convenience store to buy some smokes, (go figure---an AA gathering that went heavy on the smokes!), only to find the black dude who spoke so eloquently the night before doing the same. We didn't stop to chat, however, and I don't know what it said about us that none of us could remember his name. One thing's for sure, though: none of us will forget the name “Rock Eagle”, nor how much trying to sleep in a room with seven other dudes sucks.
While I am enthusiastic about AA-based recovery, I was less so about the prospect of taking a weekend to join some four hundred gentleman at a 4-H camp facility in the middle of nowhere. Alas, my AA sponsor and the lady who runs my halfway house came through with a “scholarship”, which allowed for 75% off the registration cost, thus making it doable for my broke ass. I was promised a fine opportunity for fellowship and networking, and in my situation any little bit helps. So I escaped a busy Friday afternoon on the courier trail, collected two of my fellows from my recovery residence program and embarked for Eastern Georgia, and no shortage of mens.
I was happy to make this getaway with one of my roommates, Brian, who is a very sharp lad who has fallen on some trying times. I enjoy his company, unlike the other guy who came with us, Ryan, who comes across as something of a lunatic. Happily, however, it soon became apparent that I had caught Ryan on a bad day when I gave him a ride home from the grocery store and he really appeared to have a screw loose. Alas, he turned out to be a delightful chap and a fine addition to our party. We finished the nearly two hour trek through a Friday Atlanta rush hour relatively unscathed and were able to get to our cottage with plenty of time to join in the opening festivity---a BBQ with hundreds of recovering addicts.
The camp facility was most impressive, as might be expected being affiliated with the University of Georgia, and its endowment. The grounds were well-manicured, with lots of benches here and there, and had very modern buildings and furniture in all of the common areas. The setting was also idyllic---in the middle of the woods, on a small lake, and there was a giant eagle formed out of rocks by Indians centuries ago that I didn’t bother going to see.. There were a few newly-built cabins as well, but the majority of them were clearly at least forty years old. Herein lied the problem for the middle-aged man: the accommodations. The older cabins had eight men to a bunk bed-furnished room, featuring a bathroom with one shower stall and an unfortunate musty smell. Suddenly, he reason for me balking at attending this workshop to begin with basically slapped me in the fact---but this was only the beginning. More on this later...
To be completely honest, besides the essential assistance the AA fellowship and meetings provides, one of my favorite aspects of my recovery is the presence of the fairer sex. I figure if my life is in the shitter, generally speaking, at least I can engage in one of my favorite pastimes: flirting with women. I mention this because this BBQ offered anything but this. While no surprise, this reality still a jolt, and keeping a happy face wasn’t the easiest thing to do initially. The chatterbox we ended up dining next to didn’t help matters either. While I tried to keep an open mind, sure enough the University of Florida hat proved to be an indicator of simply bad conversation, but I digress, (you'd probably have to live in the South to understand). Thankfully it’s easy to lose people, if necessary, in a group of a few hundred.
Luckily my snobbery was short-lived, as I spotted numerous fellow Atlantans that I knew from meetings in the crowd. I chatted them up in our new environs and they enthusiastically talked up what lay in store for the weekend. A “cabin meeting” followed, i.e. all of the guys in our sleeping quarters met for the first time, introducing ourselves so that bonding with those you have something in common would be easier. This normally consists of each person declaring his sobriety date, possibly his drug(s) of choice, how many of these events he’s attended, and what he expects out of the experience. Most keep it brief, but there are always those who enjoy hearing themselves talk and/or get a tad sanctimonious with their “sharing”. Our group of sixteen spanned ages of around twenty to over seventy, and most appeared to be cool people to be around. Unfortunately this encounter failed to expose the felonious snorers among us, which would’ve allowed us to quarantine them in the living room/spare bedroom. I’ll detail this dreadful dilemma a little later.
The Festivities Begin
Not long after the cabin meeting, all attendees descended on the auditorium for some welcoming words from the chairman of the steering committee, followed by the weekend’s first speaker. The building was nearly new, but more interestingly, we got free reign in the ladies room, since this was a men only event. Oddly there were no tampon dispensers installed, which I found to be quite odd. Anyway, there was abundant enthusiasm in the gathering, although I couldn’t help but think it because all these men had made an escape from their spouses and responsibilities for a weekend than anything the program offered. The fact is, when you remove drugs and alcohol from life, seemingly small things like a getaway with four hundred men feels like getting away with something. But I digress again---back to the proceedings.
A portly older gentleman with a scowl, a booming voice and a hair style similar to Bob’s Big Boy made his way to the podium to kick things off. Coincidentally, this guy is also my “grand-sponsor” in AA, although this doesn’t necessarily mean I come in contact with him often. Anyway, “Bob” begins by explaining how he was involved with this workshop fifty-nine editions ago and how he has twenty-nine years of sobriety. This is information we can use, and while certainly impressive, falls short of braggadocio. But then... Bob somehow works in that he recently stayed in a four star resort in Palm Springs for a recent AA-based event, complete with a Rolls Royce limo as transportation. Then he introduces a video, to play on the stage screen, of a marginally funny old Bill Cosby bit about drinking. All well and good, except Bob makes it clear that he knows Mr.Cosby personally, and that he gave him permission to use the clip for this occasion. In fact, the video begins with something like: “By permission to Bob’s Big Boy by Mr. Bill Cosby”. As if Cosby’s lawyers would track down someone for playing a video of him at some obscure workshop for alcoholics that isn’t being re-broadcast anywhere? Really?
I point all of this out only because of the stark contrast Bob made to the concept of humility, which is one of the basic tenets of AA. Far from sounding humble, this guy put off the vibe that he was in fact the Grand Poo-Bah, and you got the feeling if someone wished to crown him he would at least briefly consider the opportunity. (And things get even worse with this guy as the weekend unfolded, trust me.) Really, it was unintentional comedy at it’s finest, and a nice warm-up act for the evening’s keynote speaker: Randy, a classic redneck from the hills of Western North Carolina.
Randy wore a coat and tie that recalled a kid going for his senior pictures, and added a black beret-style lid that covered most of the bowl cut of his salt-and-papper hair. As he gazed into the audience through his yellow-tinted safety glasses I had to wonder if this was in fact a comedian opening for the night’s headliner. Lo and behold, this was the guy---an AA vet with nineteen years of sobriety and a large number of speaking appearances for these occasions under his belt. In fact, he was among those at the Palm Springs event our pompous host has mentioned earlier. Randy may not have been technically a comic, but I’ll be damned if he wasn’t a humorist reminiscent of Brother Dave Gardner, who was another Charlotte-area native with an alcohol problem.
Off Randy went, with the smoothest speaking style you’ve ever heard. No “ums”, or “uh’s” here---this guy was polished. He proceeded to go well over an hour with his story of torment and ultimately triumph, thanks to getting sober in AA. Along the way we learned that he had his own personal Curtis Loew in his small hometown, except instead of playing all day in exchange for wine, this guy didn’t play shit, but instead bought Randy the wine as long as he got some for himself. He also had a hard-working Mama, an old ‘59 hearse as his first vehicle, and referred to a the repo man and the “take-back” man. Overall he was most inspiring as a speaker and my enthusiasm for the weekend was duly lifted.
Into The Night
We then repaired to another building for snacks, which consisted of a little fruit and a shitload of doughnuts and cake to go with coffee and sodas. Much to my consternation, however, there were no napkins available, which kind of blew my mind. I had a word with a member of the steering committee, (my sponsor), about this transgression, and he explained that: “we’ve never had them.”, as if this was an acceptable explanation.
The next segment of our workshop were smaller groups featuring speakers on whatever issue might be pertinent, in my case this was being broke as fuck, for lack of a better term.
This consisted of a couple of guys giving uninspired speeches about how life had kicked their asses and how the steps of AA help them deal with the aftermath. While it was oddly heartening to realize I was not alone, this was hardly a good chance to network so that I might be helped out of my currently poor circumstance. It was still a worthwhile lecture on some level though, and a decent way to wrap up the evening. Unlike a lot of fellow “Rock” attendees, I was uninterested in staying up late and bullshitting with people because I was quite tired and preferred going to bed. Then the fun began...
My roommate Brian and I retired before all of the other six, climbing to the top of our bunk beds by using the frame for lack of a built-in ladder. At 6’6”, I’m a bit long for these accommodations to begin with, even though I sleep on my side. The ancient mattress and a room that smelled like dirty socks didn’t help either, but I got to sleep eventually. Until...
I was awakened by what sounded like a person having the last breath strangled out of him. A murder in progress? Not exactly. It was “merely” one of our roommates who suffered from sleep apnea, but had yet to get the machine with which he could be treated.
And so it went for the rest of the night---even though I had earplugs in and a spare pillow over my head. They tell me that the other poor saps in the room joked about the offender initially, but his completely random growls made them lose their senses of humor real quick. For good measure, there were also two other people in the room, one directly below me, who also snored. And the room still smelled like dirty socks, most likely mixed with an occasional fart, I’m sure---which certainly made its way to the upper reaches of the room before dissipating. Sure enough, my worst nightmare of why I was reluctant to come to this thing were realized. Check that---actually I would’ve loved a nightmare---because that would’ve meant actually getting to sleep! The net-net is I probably managed two hours of shut-eye total, and I ideally need about nine. Not exactly a promising start to the second day of enlightenment and fellowship!
Sleep Deprivation As A Drug
So day two started way earlier than normal for me: 6:30. Or did day one ever in fact end? What with the jackhammer menace to slumbering society in our cabin, who the fuck knew?
In any event, I went bleary-eyed to the brand new cafeteria to get some food. I ended up sitting with a couple of other chaps from my halfway house, one of whom is basically dropping a diving board cannonball on life. By this I mean he’s a “type A” personality multiplied by a thousand. Now I’m no morning person to begin with, and this guy is abrasive on a normal evening, let alone in this situation, but I was kind of obligated to sit with them because they caught me looking at them when sizing up my spot. It turns out I’m glad I did, because we laughed our asses off about nothing in particular. I was punch drunk, and spitting out lethal one-liners like it was my job. Looking back, that was probably the most fun I had the whole weekend. Funny how that works.
The day’s first event was at the auditorium with the wide-open ladies room, and we were treated to three different speakers who did about twenty-five minutes each. First up was a young whipper-snapper who had one of those frat boy haircuts that covered his forehead. I must say the lad looked good in a suit and tie, though, and he spoke with a grace that belied his years. His message of his AA recovery was pretty standard, and I must say it’s kind of tough to take seriously a story from a kid of twenty-two. He also went to the water bottle way too many times, indeed sometimes removing the top and forgetting to actually drink. I couldn’t help but allow this tic to distract me, along with somewhat evilly speculating to myself roughly when his first relapse will arrive. (If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in my four-month AA crash course, it’s that almost no one makes it on the first try.) “Sure, you’re riding high now, kid...”, I thought. Was it the sleep deprivation that made me a dick or am I simply an asshole in general? We may never know...
The next guy was certainly the speaker of the weekend in my book, as well as many others. He was a standard white guy in his mid-thirties, that is to say he looked exactly like a Mormon. You know the guy---hair sprayed like a politician, etc. He was exceptional on the stump too. High-energy, humorous, intelligent---this guy had it all, including several years of sobriety and a kick-ass message to the masses. I don’t quite recall what the message was because I failed to take notes, but I know it was solid. Hell, as good a speaker as he was I likely would’ve been on board if he proposed an ecstasy party later that night, three months of sobriety be damned!
Wrapping up the clumsily-ordered speaking trifecta was a guy who looked very much like the basketball coach Phil Jackson. He’s a fireman by profession, and I’m sure I’m not alone in being glad he got off the sauce, just for the sake of his jurisdiction. He was a low energy, Buzz Killington, which is why i question the order of the speakers. Don’t get me wrong---people with downer stories are important for learning in AA, just not necessarily as closing speakers. He was a wise man who had been through quite a lot though, but I don’t quite recall anything specific from his speech. Check that; I did remember one thing: that the guy was an “incest survivor”. Not to belittle this guy’s plight, but as a speaker, as soon as you drop this sort of information the audience’s minds are likely to wander. Personally I didn’t hear a thing he said for the next five minutes as I imagined what specifically he was talking about. Was it an Uncle? An unattractive big sister? As with this speaker, I probably shouldn’t have brought this up either...let’s just move along.
After this speaker event, the crowd split up into smaller groups, each focused on one of the AA steps. I wanted to attend the second and third step, because I’m still in dire need of spiritual guidance. Unfortunately that meeting was on one end of a large room while another meeting was being staged on the other, about sixty feet away. Too much chaos for me---much like a music festival at which two stages are too close together. So I tracked down the step one meeting, which happened to be right behind our house of horrors, err, cabin. It was a good meeting as these things go, most certainly because anyone serious enough about their AA “program” to come sleep in a barracks for two nights is going to say something half-thoughtful anyway. (AA meeting quality can vary, trust me!)
I enjoyed a lunch of processed chicken fingers in the ultra-modern cafeteria, joined by Brian and a guy from our cabin who looks very much like Jesus, only with shorter hair. He’s from Atlanta as well, and attends an AA meeting in Va Highland called “High Noon”, which is probably not the best name for a group of people trying to stay sober. We learned that Jesus has two teen-aged kids at home, and only later discovered that he’s gay and the kids are adopted from Asia. Not that there’s anything wrong with that---the guy could pass as the Messiah himself!
Brian and I were joined by another cabin-mate, (whose name escapes me, of course), for a leisurely stroll around the grounds and some good soberly fellowship. As we embarked on our walk we came across a frisbee whose owner was clearly nowhere nearby. Seeing that I forgot to bring mine, I had a very strong impulse to pick it up and use it on our walk, surely to put it back where I found it. The other two balked at this plan, our new friend pointing out something ridiculous like: “if the owner isn’t around to ask, I assume I can’t borrow something.” I countered with: “Well, we’re only going to be gone thirty minutes, and this frisbee is clearly idle.” Ultimately Brian cast the deciding “no” vote, and we left the fucking disc there. Luckily it was a beautiful fall day in a wonderful setting, so I got over the disappointment quickly.
Our walk took us past the small lake and the enchantment of about forty turtles of varying size , tightly lined up on logs basking in the sun. Half of them dove into the water when we got within two hundred yards of them, so I assume those were the French. We passed a couple of young ladies who were in for a much, much smaller church-based retreat and resisted the urge to chat them up. In retrospect I can’t tell you if they were attractive or not because being immersed in four hundred middle-aged dry drunks will straight-up screw with a man’s perspective. Susan Boyle probably would’ve looked hot at this point. The third guy mentioned he was originally from Philly, but somehow was unaware that Hall and Oates were also from there. In addition, he had never even heard of Cinderella. I probably shouldn’t have shoved him off the dock for this lack of knowledge, but fuck this guy. Just kidding---I didn’t make a big deal out of it.
The Highlight of the Trip
.
I wandered back near our cabin after lunch with intentions of joining a pick-up softball game, but it wasn’t to start for an hour or so. I considered a nap, but since that might detract from my punch-drunk state from sleep-deprivation, I decided to fight on with the waking world. Actually, it was more like I heard the young fellow who opened that morning’s speaker line-up playing a Widespread Panic song on guitar on the front porch of a cabin two down from mine. Theirs was a modern, deluxe version, which housed the steering committee members, (my sponsor among them), and the guest speakers, and it felt sort of off-limits to us commoners. Good thing I didn’t care at this point...
I introduced myself to the kid, named Chase, and sat next to him and we chatted about jam bands. He was friendly enough, but seemed a little off in a way. Right about the time I was going to peace out, out walked Marty, the entertaining speaker from the night before who had the same accent as my grandparents, along with the aforementioned Brother Dave Gardner. Well how about this luck! I was thrilled to leave the dud kid a-strummin’ and move over next to Marty and let the stories begin.
I’m not sure what was more remarkable: that he had worked at a nuclear power plant since he was an eighteen year-old drunk or that he’s left this slight detail out of his story when he was on the stump. I mean, he was essentially a drunk Homer Simpson wandering around split atoms for over twenty years. Perhaps his spectacles didn’t have yellow tinted lenses after all---it could be the radiation coming out of his head! But seriously, it turns out that former Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart served on the host committee at the aforementioned Palm Springs AA conference, and Marty got an opportunity to see her famous legs. Not spread or anything---just modeled a little at his request. What a doll! Marty also mentioned the the Rolls Royce chauffeur genuinely scared him, and he and his wife took a cab to ‘ol Tony Bennett’s restaurant and back even though it cost him over a hundred bucks.
Soon enough we were surrounded by four or five other people, and while the conversation was still lively, my private audience with Marty was sadly gone. I must say the guy with the long beard with a fake spider stuck in it was pretty funny though, despite his obviously trying too hard with his prop. Which reminds me, there was an attendee here who wore a t- shirt: “Alcatraz Psycho Ward”. In my book it might as well have read: “I Try Too Hard; Avoid Me!”. Rarely is the good conversation found with someone who’s wearing a stupid t-shirt. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I’ll take my chances. I hung out on the porch for a little while longer before heading over for the pickup softball game.
I didn’t get to shag any fly balls beforehand, which is the excuse I’m giving for coming in on the first inning ball that shot over my head in center field. I also nearly struck out in my one at bat, and then took the opportunity to quit playing because it couldn’t be good for my hernia. Sadly, at age forty-six I pretty much need to stop playing every sport but golf, simply because they hurt. Anyway, I settled for joining the peanut gallery, making fun of the guys still playing, and flipping the frisbee around with some dude, (who owned it), and that was fun enough.
Next up on the official schedule was a Q&A session with a panel of all the weekend’s speakers. They were all in casual attire, which immediately made me wonder why they wore suits when speaking for our motley crew in the first place. Just as I wonder why TV sports announcers are required to wear a coat and tie to address a bunch of guys laying on their couches scratching their balls, but I digress. The guy with the fake spider in his beard read questions submitted by attendees since the start of the weekend, and all were regarding AA recovery. Mormon Guy was quick to answer almost all of the time, and the others piped up often as well. I must say it was tough to take the twenty-two year old seriously regarding life advice, but I’m sure it wasn’t his idea to be up there. And speaking of being up...
This session ended with the aforementioned Grand Pooh-Bah of the weekend---my grandsponsor “Bob”---getting up on stage to oversee the weekend's lone “passing of the hat”, for donations towards future scholarships. And by “oversee”, I mean: “darkly scowl, growl, and leer at the audience of hundreds as they presumably gave until it hurt.” I don't exaggerate when I say this felt like a mass trip to the principal's office, even though I tossed in ten bucks. The guy demanded silence from everyone as he stood there, sometimes with his arms crossed, laying on the most intense non-verbal guilt trip imaginable. He might as well have said: “You only threw five bucks into the pot? THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!” And this awkwardness went on for a good ten minutes, without even the benefit of background music, which most fittingly would've been Black Sabbath's “War Pigs”, or something. It was just bizarre. I'm not going to lie: (I'm still afraid of the guy, and this happened a month ago!)
“Fuck it---let’s leave!”
After the afternoon session, our impossibly loud snorer situation in the cabin took front and center in the proceedings. Brian, Ryan, and I decided to leave after the final program later that night, thus missing the final speaker Sunday morning and presumably getting a solid night’s sleep. We loaded our shit into the car to facilitate the “thief-in-the-night” style exit and then got down to exactly when we would leave. This was all well and good until I ran into my sponsor Eric, (who again is on the steering committee for the event), at dinner an hour later. After putting it off for a while I finally kind of threw it out there. “Oh, by the way, we’re gonna blaze out of here after the speaker tonight, so that we might get more than a couple of hours of sleep. That’s not going to make you mad, is it?”
Low-key Eric merely said something like: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Sunday morning’s event is the best part of the weekend, blah, blah, blah.” This was a bitter defeat, and I was cursing my luck for finding the AA 12-step program, which encourages doing the right thing so often---so very annoyingly sometimes. In the past I would’ve have told Eric shit, and just took off as planned, simply fabricating if confronted later: “Oh, you didn’t see me at the closing program? Shit...I guess I should’ve waited to take that leak until after the lord’s prayer so it wouldn’t look like I blew it off!” Yes, the only thing good about this dinner proved to be the tasty pasta /cheese whatever the hell it was.
The fact is that for a while afterwards, I still intended to leave, even though Eric would probably fire me as a sponsee. We vacillated quite a bit before deciding to stay, and I felt like I was in the middle of some stupid reality show, with some orchestrated “dilemma”. I must say it was amusing though. Ultimately, knowing that our Halfway House Mom Debbie would likely be pissed, not to mention Eric went to the trouble of getting us steep discounts to attend in the first place. Leaving to save one night’s sleep would’ve caused more problems than it was worth. I was still not happy however, so if we were staying, the next challenge was to try to solve the problem instead. Clearly, the snorer needed to die. Just kidding.
We returned to our bunk to find several of the other victims hanging out and, needless to say, I took the bull by the horns. I immediately determined whether the main offender was there at the time, but he wasn’t. I then suggested we all vote the fucker out into the common room, which had some spare sleeping arrangements in addition to some couches. I was thinking about taking one of them myself, but it would obviously be better to cast out one guy as opposed to having the other seven have to worry about avoiding him. Seems only fair.
A roomie named John said he actually knew the offender, and would convey that we wanted him out, and get back to us later with the result. Good enough, I thought, despite the fact that John himself snores like a motherfucker, and was in the bed directly below me. Honestly, I should’ve told them both to GTFO, but I’m simply not that big of a dick. I was satisfied the problem would be solved at this point, and I could live with a merely rhythmic snorer as long as a dude who sounds like he’s drowning doesn’t wake me up every half hour. At this point Brian, Ryan, and I took our gear back out of the car and moved in again, much to the amusement of Eric, who saw us from the porch of his cabin. I don’t think he knew how serious we were about taking off.
The Soul Man
Now I’m not going to say this was a lily-white affair by any means, but it’s safe to say that that the percentage of minorities in AA is much lower than the population at large. In other words, this gathering needed an infusion of energy---soul, if you will---and boy did we get it!
This guy in his mid-thirties was a straight-up Baptist-style speaker, and he looked the part too, with a dark pinstriped suit accessorized with a gold necklace and big-framed spectacles. He was of strong build and carried a stronger message----one of survival from the streets of Tampa, along with the wrong side of prison walls. (This sort of spoke to me, and not because I’m from Tampa, I’m not.)
He had a speaking style that demanded your attention, and the cadence and voice of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. His was a very polished message, and he had it down. No way this guy was resting on his AA speaker circuit laurels just because he was filling a racial quota---he brought game. More importantly, he did not do a: “the last time I saw this many white people in a room” joke, much to this comic’s relief. His overall message was one of accountability and perseverance, sprinkled with little asides of the good life he was living when he was running drugs and chasing tail. I’m not sure if he wasn’t used to his speaking time frame or not, but he seemed to go about fifteen minutes longer than he needed to. In addition, you could tell the parts of his rap that were relatively new because he would speak perfectly for a few minutes, and then suddenly be saying: “um”, “uhh”, etc. It was noticeable only because he was so smooth most of the time---a really great speaker.
Us attendees soon found our uplifted selves heading to the snack building for more messy doughnuts and cake with no napkins or paper towels. I ran into my sponsor Eric, who amusingly enough thought I saw him and tried to avoid him. I assured hum this was not the case, however, and we had a good conversation about the proceedings and how he was glad that my crew and I were staying another night. I ended up chatting with him and another dude a bit too long, and this caused some adversity because it made me late for my next lecture: “Dealing With Adversity”. I raced back to the auditorium and joined the crowd watching a video of a speech by a former prisoner of war.
Now while my lifestyle has been knocked down a number of pegs, I really don’t have it that bad. Sure, I have a possible prison sentence hanging over me, I’m bankrupt, and coming to terms with the fact that I’ll never catch another artificial buzz in my lifetime, but... At least I’m not in a prison camp in Viet Nam, living on rice and water, not knowing if I’m going to to ever be released, and even live or die. (Ninety AA meetings in ninety days is a similar test, but ultimately not comparable.) Yes, this program was just the tonic to make all of us feel better about ourselves---all the way down to the guy who looks like Phil Jackson serving as the discussion leader. It was all kind of like the TV show COPS, and the garbage like Maury Povitch: sure, I may be down, but at least I’m not that person!
After the video ended the mic was somewhat awkwardly passed around the auditorium for people to share their thoughts about the video or their own tales of woe and how they’re dealing with those obstacles. It was really quite uplifting and inspiring. I grabbed the mic at one point and after pausing a few seconds, said: “I really don’t have anything to share, I just wanted the people seated near me to feel slightly awkward because everyone is looking this way right now.” (Actually I didn’t do that, but the thought did occur to me.) All in all, it was a great way to finish up the day’s events, and I was glad to have stuck around because our earlier plan had us skipping out by then.
Bunk Funk: The Conclusion
While the majority of my fellow Rock attendees stayed up late kibitzing and rekindling old friendships, I was on the back end of a day-long caffeine buzz, so I was going to bed. Upon returning to my musty sleeping quarters, my lower bunkie informed me that he was unable to locate Offensive Snorer to inform him that he's been “voted off the island”. I checked to see if any of the beds in the common area
were available, only to find they were all claimed. Seasoned veterans off this sort of dilemma, no doubt! Anyway, realizing my options were severely limited and I was tired as hell, I just took to my bed and hoped one of my other roommates had him killed or something.
As it turned out, the snorer never re-surfaced in the room that night, although the guy below me still sawed logs like you read about. That was small potatoes by comparison, though, and I got a decent night's sleep. In fact, I slept until 7:30, whereupon Ryan woke me up in time for me to dash to the cafeteria and shovel down some food prior to the weekend's final program. It turned out the coffee in our portion of the chow hall was on empty, so we had to invade the other side to take some of theirs. This made me feel like I was getting away with something, and also feel like a dirty old man, as there were some young ladies around, thanks to the aforementioned church retreat. All of them looked like “10's” at this point in the weekend, I can tell you that much.
The final gathering of the weekend commenced, with the subject naturally being spirituality. The guy doing the speaking was seemingly nice enough, but he didn't really come across as a real spiritual guy. Frankly, I expected him to start talking about his DVD series at any moment, given his plentiful amusing anecdotes and sales jokes. (I would later discover that the steering committee has struggled to replace a guy who was an ace in this Sunday speaking slot, and that can't be an easy task.) This isn't to say the speaker was bad, it's more to express some disappointment that we stayed an extra night in a locker room for the privilege of hearing it.
The weekend's events was brought to a close in fine fashion, however, thanks to the Grand Poobah giving new instructions for the Lord's Prayer that closed the session. We were to keep our eyes open and survey the brotherhood instead of looking down in meditative fashion. Indeed, the resulting emotions were quite powerful. The prayer was the most remarkable parts of any of the gatherings in the auditorium, as there's a certain power and moving nature in hundreds of formerly broken men joining together arm-in-arm in reverence of their higher powers. And I'm far from a fan of the prayer itself or organized religion in general. It was simply not something I think can be seen and felt just every day.
After things wrapped up I bid farewell to my sponsor Eric and a few others whom I had met and high-tailed it out of there with Brain and Ryan in tow. We stopped quickly at a convenience store to buy some smokes, (go figure---an AA gathering that went heavy on the smokes!), only to find the black dude who spoke so eloquently the night before doing the same. We didn't stop to chat, however, and I don't know what it said about us that none of us could remember his name. One thing's for sure, though: none of us will forget the name “Rock Eagle”, nor how much trying to sleep in a room with seven other dudes sucks.
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